This past week was a lovely grand opening day at the market. Family and friends were out to soak up the sun, spend time together and get involved with our "super market"! It was a brilliant sensory experience for all. People tested out their skills with Hooper Sonic, our four musicians for the day provided awesome raw, acoustic energy, and finally it was seriously great to take in all the excitement around our first real day of local food at the park.

​We look forward to getting into the #marketwednesday routine with our community.

This week the fun and good food continues! As the crops grow we are going to see more of our farms. This week Fiddle Head Farm from Prince Edward County joins the lineup along with Rolling Hills Organics, Cedar Hedge Farm and P & V Farm. And...there are some new prepared food vendors to check out. Manning Canning is back with a unique new product -Shrubs, Mnandi Pies with their famous grab-and-go savoury pies, Crown and Anchor southern BBQ, Pasta Tucci fresh pastas, The Pop Stand with her all natural ice pops and of course Blackbird Bread and pizza!

One new vendor to look out for this week is Just Shut Up and Try it Ferments. Joanna and Marketa have a mission to put ferments on the family table in a fun and sassy way! Stop by the learn about their very new company and pick up some of their family friendly Kombucha.

As always we have a fabulous set of musicians on the market stage! Bring a picnic blanket and stay for listen Imogen Joy, Yaka, Mike Bernstein, and Asha Diaz are all hitting the stage.

There is nothing better than a lazy market Wednesday night in the park followed by some awesome market meals!

A Trip to the Farm

This weekend one of our market families went on a lovely drive through the rolling hills of Northumberland County to visit Chris at Cedarhedge Farm. If you haven't done this yet...trust us, it's always worth the trip to visit a farm! As we pulled into the gravel entrance way marked with a "micro-greens" sign we were greeted by Chris, seated in his market farm stand with his iconic hat, surrounded by seedlings for sale -- barn cat in hand.

This isn't your romantic view of what a farm is...this is a working farm. There is equipment, and tools and buckets and parts of a greenhouse about to be built all around the main gate. And it's hot! And dry. So dry. The one thing this working farm doesn't have is water.

Chris runs his farm off-the-grid. Meaning that everything he does - he does without the use of power or water. He heats the greenhouse with a wood stove, when the rain doesn't cooperate he waters his 10 acres by hand, he uses a man-powered tool to wrangle weeds and each seedling (and there are 300 more to go!) are placed in the earth by hand.

Bugs aren't sprayed with toxins they are picked by hand or sometimes the lucky muscovy ducks from next door waddle over for a bug dinner. On this particular trip, Chris was facing a possible blister bug infestation on a small part of his Fava bean crop. Prior to our visit he was preparing to confirm this. He doesn't want to kill helpful bugs or let the ducks feed on blister bugs. So he will test it out on himself - a little blister won't kill me he says! If they are in fact blister bugs...the only solution is to pick them all of (very carefully) by hand!

Then...we are thirsty. We pull a hose from the neighbours yard for a little water. It's so hot that we could make tea with the water from the hose. It runs a bit to cool down and we all take an old-school, cool drink. We walk by the RV that Chris sleeps in the night before market as he needs to get up early to prepare.

Chris tours us through the sweet peas, snap peas, bush beans, fava beans, raspberries,at least 10 kinds of heritage tomatoes and where his pond, and underground greenhouse will be built. We meet his old tractor, Bessie. "She's a strong work horse - just needs lots of breaks", he says.

We visit the neighbours to see the ducks, chicken, sheep and a new baby Llama. Chris is learning about animal husbandry from this neighbour. Deciding if he has the heart to raise animals for market. We can tell from this part of the tour...he has a real soft spot for all of these animals. He has been helping to feed the baby Llama as it was born pre-maturely and tells us that as much as they need the rain, he's worried about what will happen to this little one if it storms.

We finish the tour by taking a peek in the greenhouse. I say peek because none of us could manage more than a few seconds inside! It's incredibly warm, filled with happy, earthy seedlings and a mother goose in her house at the back. Laying. Waiting. A chick will hatch soon.

As much as we think we already know about farming and where our food comes from, we are always astounded at how much personal, physical work goes into growing our food. Take a trip. Visit a farm!

Vendors This Week

Our Vendors for This WeekHere’s a list of all the vendors for this week that we’ve got lined up for you!: